Alex Kline, a leading college basketball recruiting expert, works on his laptop at his home in Lambertville, N.J., in December. / William Thomas Cain for USA TODAY SPORTS

by Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports

by Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Alex Kline fits right in with so many other Syracuse University freshmen whose daily concerns include overdue laundry and lingering classroom assignments.

But the 18-year-old New Jersey native lives in two different worlds. He doesn't tell most classmates that he has fielded more than 100 text messages a day this spring from college basketball coaches, top recruits and their family members or advisers.

He does not tell them that he was recently alongside LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Bryce Harper in Forbes' "30 under 30" list of most influential figures in the sports world under the age of 30.

And he does not flaunt the letter from the White House that stated "with sincere regret" that President Obama could not attend Kline's annual Mary Kline Classic, a high school basketball all-star event he stages in the spring to raise money for cancer research. A brain tumor took his mom's life when he was 10. More than $39,000 has been raised so far.

In a new media world tailored to pinpoint the next basketball wünderkind, few individuals have received as much hype as Kline, who founded The Recruit Scoop website at 15. The Recruit Scoop is a premium Rivals.com site that offers free recaps. Kline now has more than 27,000 followers on its Twitter account.

"He is an extremely goodhearted person whose intentions are to help people, particularly high school players," says University of Miami men's basketball assistant Chris Caputo. "For somebody his age to be helping other kids get college scholarships is a pretty noble thing. The (fame) he gets, I don't think he craves that. I think he really wants to help people."

Kline fashions himself part journalist, part event promoter and organizer. He cultivates relationships, gathers information and even recommends recruits to various college coaches nationwide.

His days begin as early as 7 a.m. and continue as late as 3 a.m., as he tries to keep sponsors of his event happy and maintains communication with recruits and college coaches, while worrying about the 1,200-word paper due on immigration and the economy.

While most freshmen spend their final few spring semester weekends tending to academic or social endeavors, Kline has a different itinerary. After returning from a trip to a basketball event in Connecticut two weekends ago, he traveled to Pittsburgh for another this past weekend and will head to Mississippi for another next weekend.

On his way to Pittsburgh, Kline posted on Facebook that he was bored, so the "first five college coaches to text me will receive (a) scoop on a prospect they should watch this weekend." The result, he said: "It paid off for a lot of them!"

Kline has an interest in journalism, management and business, envisioning himself as a "triple-threat, someone who is versatile and could do everything. I am not sure what that entails because there isn't anyone like that."

Social media changes recruiting

Kline's rising acclaim mirrors the growing fan appetite for recruiting news, stories and nuggets. In the past decade, college basketball recruiting has become a year-round drama that in some corners of the country can overshadow a team's on-court results.

Different from college football, landing just one can't-miss prospect in college basketball can mean the difference between a deep run in the NCAA tournament and a deep run in the NIT. It can determine whether a coach keeps his job.

The heightened attention on the recruiting world has spawned a cottage industry of those who rank elite prospects who can be as young as fourth graders.

"Everything is so instantaneous now," said Evan Daniels, 27, national recruiting analyst for Scout.com and among the most reputable in the recruiting business, working in it since just before his freshman year at Western Kentucky.

"Social media has really changed how we cover recruiting. Your average college basketball fan is paying a lot more attention to recruiting now than eight years ago when I first got into this business. The recruiting industry as a whole has really taken off."

Kline says he got involved in college basketball because he wanted to be around high-profile events and do something "other than filling up water bottles and lugging around the ball bag." So as a high school freshman he began writing feature stories, conducting video interviews with touted high school players such as Kyrie Irving and developing a following for sharing recruiting news with fans, players and college coaches.

On the trips he takes now, Kline evaluates and interviews recruits, asking them if they have whittled down their list of schools. He often exchanges text messages with college coaches, raising such issue as which schools are offering which players scholarships.

Last month, Kline said, two individuals in college basketball told him that UCLA coach Ben Howland would be fired. He tweeted that out to his followers -- and watched the retweets come like "the New York Stock Exchange."

Juggling act supreme

At Syracuse the biggest challenge for Kline, a graduate of the Pennington School in central Jersey, has been becoming independent and living away from his father. Kline said the first semester was particularly difficult because he knew few people, but he was motivated in proving wrong those who felt he could not deftly juggle academics and his recruiting workload.

"The one thing that was to my advantage, and disadvantage as well, is that I don't drink or smoke or do all of that stuff," Kline says. "It is to my advantage because it means more free time for me so I can do all this work. The disadvantage is it's a little tougher.

"But it's $50,000 to attend college, and you can do all that when you are finished. Now it's about being serious. Not just getting your workload done but maybe starting a business or creating something really great. So when you get out of college, have a plan."

Kline's father, Robert, said he now has a new introduction for himself -- "I'm Alex Kline's father" -- and that his son is more mature at 18 than Robert Kline is now.

"I think because he is very focused and passionate about what he wants to do, and he enjoys what he is doing, he is very capable of balancing all these balls in the air and none of them have fallen," Kline's father says. "A lot of that (focus) may have to do with the fact that he had to grow up so quickly with his mother being seriously ill when he was 5. And living through her illness, and then with her passing when he was 10."

Kline acknowledges that he is not going to be a straight-A student but that he is determined to get his degree. And unlike many of the elite recruits he covers, he says he will not be a one-and-done college student. He will be back at Syracuse next year and says he does not feel going to college is holding him back.

There is nothing that means more to him than the Mary Kline Classic, which features some of the nation's better high school players. The third annual installment is June 2 at Philadelphia (Pa.) University, with 100% of the proceeds going to the National Brain Tumor Society.

"I am someone who wants to be remembered many years after I die," Kline says. "An event like this promotes (his mother's) name and does her justice even though she missed out on so many years where she could have done something equivalent to this."

The spotlight does seem to find Kline. He was right about Howland: UCLA did fire him.

Two days after the firing, Kline was in his grammar class at Syracuse's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications when one of the many friends oblivious to Kline's involvement in the story approached with a simple question: "Hey, did you see Ben Howland got fired?"